Guardian Books podcast

Well, this has been a lengthy absence... Fear not, I won't bore you with the reasons behind it. Suffice it to say that I currently find myself with time on my hands and nowhere to go for a few weeks, so reviving this blog seems like the perfect project.

One thing certainly hasn't changed since last year: I'm still listening to podcasts at every opportunity.

The Guardian Books podcast generally offers compelling, lengthy interviews with authors. For example, a recent episode entitled "Why Have We Forgotten Jack the Ripper's Victims?" posed an uncomfortable question. True crime has long been popular, but except in very rare cases it gives pride of place to murders and their perpetrators, reducing the (overwhelmingly female) human beings upon whom these unpardonable acts are committed to little more than a name — as though they had existed solely to provide a convenient body as target.

I found both of this episode's guests fascinating. Hallie Rubenhold's The Five deliberately ignores Jack the Ripper and his heinous crimes, i.e. where his victims' stories end, choosing instead to focus on their individual lives. (Countless reviews of this book call it "long overdue.") In The Butchering Art, Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris explores surgery in the 19th century, specifically the pioneering work by Joseph Lister in the fight against infection.

Two of the topics discussed particularly interested me: how victims are still today blamed for their victimhood through a narrative built around them to explain how they put themselves in a situation where they inevitably became targets of violence; and the true meaning of "justice for the victims" lying not in identifying their killer over a century later, but in learning about and respecting these victims as individuals. Food for thought indeed.